


you are cordially invited

by meretricula



Category: Hart of Dixie
Genre: F/M, Marriage of Convenience, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-25
Updated: 2011-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-28 02:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/302959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meretricula/pseuds/meretricula
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If only I'd known when I was applying to medical school that my mother was right and it would only matter if I managed to find a man to marry me!" Zoe raged. "I'm a woman past thirty-five and I'm not married, I must not be a real doctor! Clearly my years of study and medical practice mean nothing compared to my <i>good repute</i> as a qualification to actually practice medicine in this stupid town!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	you are cordially invited

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ionaonie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ionaonie/gifts).



"Lavon!" Zoe yelled, stomping into the kitchen in her not-exactly-sensible heels. "LA-VON!"

"In the den!" echoed back through the house. "Get the guacamole out of the fridge, would you? I ran out of crab dip."

"Ugh, why do you always eat all the crab dip before I get home," Zoe complained.

"Because it's delicious!" Lavon called. "Get your pixie-sized butt in here, the next quarter's about to start!"

Zoe dumped the guacamole into a dish, kicked her pumps into the corner of the kitchen where her work shoes lived when she wasn't wearing them, and padded into the den in her bare feet. "It's so cute that you still pretend like I understand anything about your funny sport or actually care about watching it. Shove over."

"Woman, I have explained the concept of the touchdown several times and you are a doctor, if you still can't understand it's not my - no! No, you idiot, don't - augh!"

"So… the wrong team scored," Zoe said, squinting at the television. She folded herself up on the couch beside Lavon and tucked her feet under his leg. "Right?"

"Don't even talk to me right now," Lavon commanded. A few seconds later he added, "So what did you want to tell me when you got in?"

"You're not going to believe this!" Zoe puffed up with indignation, waving a guacamole-laden tortilla chip in the air for emphasis. " _I_ can't even believe this. Brick decided that somehow _even though he is finally retiring his senile arthritic ass_ he still wants to fuck with my practice. There was a condition buried way, way, way in the fine print when I bought him out that the practice can only be run by a member 'of good repute in the community.' Do you know what that means if you're a woman in Bluebell, Alabama?"

"No," Lavon said. He was obviously paying more attention to the television than to Zoe. Zoe jabbed her toes into his thigh, hard.

" _Married_. It means fucking _married_. He's making George sue me for - breach of contract or malpractice or something stupid like that, I don't even know. If only I'd known when I was applying to medical school that my mother was right and it would only matter if I managed to find a man to marry me!" Zoe raged. "I'm a woman past thirty-five and I'm not married, I must not be a real doctor! Clearly my years of study and medical practice mean nothing compared to my _good repute_ as a qualification to actually practice medicine in this stupid town!"

"I'll talk to George," Lavon said prudently. "And Brick."

"Oh, no," Zoe hissed. "I'm not letting them think I'm hiding behind you. I won't let them win."

"How is that - I don't want to know," Lavon decided. "How are you going to get out of the condition, though? If you signed something saying you had to be married... oh. No."

"So I'll just get married," Zoe said airily.

"No. No," Lavon repeated, with a prescience developed from long association with Zoe Hart's northern insanity.

"Come on, if Alabama had common-law marriage we'd be married already," Zoe wheedled. "It's practically your fault my repute is so terrible anyway, nobody ever asks me out after they find out I live here with you and Burt Reynolds."

"How is that my fault, I didn't ask you to move in!" Lavon yelped.

Zoe scooped up a fresh chipful of guacamole with an air of righteous vindication. "Yes, you did."

"Only because if you and Wade kept sniping at each other like that I was liable to murder you both. Can't you marry _him_?"

"First of all, Wade Kinsella and I do not have that kind of relationship. Secondly, we would kill each other if we did. And finally, Wade," Zoe said definitively, "is not cut out for the marital state."

"And you are?"

"I brought you guacamole," Zoe said, which wasn't an answer except for the way it was.

Lavon looked at the guacamole on the coffee table, at the game on the television that Zoe was watching with him even though she didn't understand or care about it, at her toes buried under his leg for warmth, and sighed.

~*~

  


_Mr. Lavon Hayes  
and Dr. Zoe Hart  
request the honor of your presence  
at their marriage..._

  


~*~

"It's about time, is all I have to say on the matter," sniffed one of the three elderly ladies sitting on the bench that overlooked the main drag of Bluebell, Alabama.

"Been living in sin with that Yankee doctor for who knows how many years," agreed her left-most companion. "Terrible example, and him a church-going man."

"Her shorts are still too short," complained the one in the center. "What kind of outfit is that for the mayor's wife?"

"I'm sure Lavon will have something to say about that as soon as they're married," said the first.

"Happen he will," said her friend, perfectly willing to be persuaded, and their talk turned to the Hattenbarger girl's latest blog update about her adventures in New York City. It was just scandalous, what the young people got up to these days!

~*~

"...if any person present knows of any lawful impediment to this marriage, he or she should declare it now," droned the justice of the peace. Zoe waited the few heartbeats that ceremony demanded, then started to get to her feet, Lavon a solidly reassuring presence beside her. "Lavon Hayes and Zoe Hart - "

"Wait," came a grated voice from Lavon's other side.

"Wade!" Zoe hissed. "What are you _doing_?"

"What I should've done a long time back!" Wade snapped. "Everyone knows you're only getting married so you can keep the practice. That's no real reason for a wedding!"

"I guess you'd know, as the resident expert in failed marriages," Zoe retorted.

Wade rocked back on his heels, his sudden flush painfully obvious against his tuxedo. Zoe had picked it out herself; obviously Wade Kinsella wasn't to be trusted with any of the best man's tasks that involved _taste_. "Well, and might happen I deserve that," he allowed. "But I'm still right and you know it."

"Excuse me," intervened the justice of the peace, "but if that's your only objection, it's not actually a lawful impediment, so I'd like to continue with the ceremony."

"What?" demanded Wade.

" _Thank_ you," Zoe said.

"No, no." Lavon crossed his arms over his chest, looking far more amused than a man whose wedding was in the process of being ruined ought to be. "I want to hear the rest of this. Wade, go on."

"Uh," said Wade. "That is. I mean. I mean, you should marry somebody 'cause you love them! Not just 'cause of some stupid condition on a contract you were too bird-brained to read all the way through."

"Well, I'm glad you think so," Zoe said, smiling over gritted teeth. "But since I do have to get married to keep my practice, unless you've got a better suggestion - "

"I was getting to it, hold your horses! I, uh. You should, you should marry me instead. 'Cause I love you, all right, I love you, Zoe Hart. I love every last annoying Yankee inch of you, right down to the three in the heels you're wearing 'cause you like to pretend you're not a midget. I love you and I know I've never been good at being married but I want to try with you and I can't if you marry Lavon right now so you shouldn't marry him, you should marry me. No offense, Lavon."

"Oh, that's quite all right," Lavon said, grinning. "Zoe? What do you say?"

Zoe Hart was, for perhaps the first time that the residents of Bluebell had ever seen, completely speechless. Wade let out a wordless sound of frustration and grabbed her shoulders, maybe meaning to shake her. He kissed her instead. "Go, Wade!" hooted Rose Hattenbarger, Zoe's maid of honor, flown in only that morning from New York City. A moment later, Zoe's arms came up and wound around Wade's neck, and she flung herself forward into the kiss.

"You can just pick up from where you left off, right?" Lavon asked the justice of the peace, sotto voce. "I mean, you don't have to start over just because she's marrying Wade instead. We all heard it the first time."

"There will be some irregularities in the paperwork," she replied, equally quiet.

"Oh, don't worry about that," Lavon said. "Paperwork never stopped Lavon Hayes. I'll get it all tidied up for you by the end of the day, ma'am."

"In that case, if we're ready to continue?" the justice asked, raising her voice. Zoe dropped back down from her tip-toes, cheeks glowing, and nodded. "Wade Kinsella and Zoe Hart, before you are joined in matrimony, I have to remind you of the solemn and binding character of the vows you are about to make..."

~*~

"...Zoe and Wade, you have both made the declarations prescribed by law and have made a solemn and binding contract in the presence of your witnesses here today. This has been without a doubt the strangest wedding I have ever performed, but it still gives me great pleasure to declare that you are now husband and wife."

Zoe and Wade didn't wait for further instructions before kissing enthusiastically. The assembled guests tended to agree with the justice: it was certainly a strange wedding, but that was what they had come to expect from their peculiar Yankee doctor, and in the end they wouldn't have had her any other way.

**Author's Note:**

> The wedding invitation template is from [here](http://www.weddingusa.com/stories/invitations_02.shtml) and the words of the wedding ceremony are from [here](http://www.leeds.gov.uk/Advice_and_benefits/Marriages/Choice_of_ceremonies.aspx). They're probably not exactly right for a secular wedding in Alabama but oh well!


End file.
